Nevereleven - The Kids are Alright
» nevereleven - Esplanade Hotel, The, Vic - March 30, 2005
Armed with a new perspective, a fresh vigour and an arsenal of brand-spanking new tracks, Cameron Nugent reveals that times are good for Nevereleven.
Since the release of their debut EP Crunch in 2006, Nevereleven have been a band that is always seeking new challenges. A change in management has also seen a change in philosophy within the group, prompting them to move away from the poppier approach of their debut, as Nugent explains, the move has had a liberating effect “This is effectively the most honest music we have written and it is headed more towards indie rock… we are excited because it is fun and honest, we can write what we want and say what we want”.
Saying what you want and being who you want is often difficult within the contemporary music industry, that sees musicians relying on mainstream exposure or endless touring in order to keep food on the table and the rent paid. How hard is it to keep your integrity and try to make a living?
“Really hard, but in the end if you love what you do in the music, to be honest, making money isn’t a massive issue…it would be a bonus but we just love what we do. We are on the road for so long and its hard, but the forty minutes on stage always reminds you what you do it for and then the fact you are being paid nothing or that the pay is getting totally absorbed into lighting and sound for the night does not seem to bother us.”
One element that has helped Nevereleven it their quest to get their music out to as many punters as possible is new technology. Their debut EP Crunch, was released on a USB drive rather than the traditional compact disk. As Cam explains, the move was based more on pragmatism that wanting to be hi tech.
“Back then we were seeing our friends releasing EP’s, selling a handful of them yet thousands of people having their songs, and these guys were eating chicken noodle soup on tour…friends like that were going to extreme lengths to tour and play music when people were downloading their stuff and you can’t blame them because it is so easy to do and its just for their love of the music that they are doing it. So we thought we would release it straight onto a memory stick so people could quite easily upload it and we were just cutting one step out of the chain for them so then it might be an impetus just to buy it rather than download it and it contained other multimedia stuff, so it was cool in that respect.”
Despite his concerns, regarding the impact technology has had on the viability of a music career, Nugent can also see the other side of the coin clearly, with the band having picked up numerous fans at home and abroad via the information superhighway.
“We’ve got a little fan base in Canada which we didn’t even realize. As soon as we released our EP for presale on the internet, the first day we did most sales of 30 – 50 but almost half of them were from Canada and we were like ‘Oh, ok, that’s interesting!’ and from one little area in particular so its bizarre where you can reach”.
Furthermore, Nugent explains that the internet has also been useful in ways other than hitting up punters with their sounds in faraway places.
“Sometimes we will literally record a demo in rehearsal and it will be up on the net maybe two hours later, we hadn’t cooled down from the rehearsal session and people were listening to it. Especially with the demos for this EP, we put one of them up and it got a bunch of hits really quickly and people gave us some feedback and they were digging what it was, that was pretty good comfort for us”.
Despite their foray into the land of cyberpunk, their next release The SatellieEP, the band are going back to the traditional compact disk. And no, its spelled correctly, without a space, The Dwarf queried Nugent as to the meaning behind it, however he was tellingly coy as to the origins of the moniker “Its obscure but it has meaning to us” he answers knowingly. Clever names aside, Nugent reveals a little about what we can expect from Nevereleven circa 2007.
“The songs now are a little more potent, we talk about political issues about kids growing up and the lack of attention and nurturing. Kids just seem to be blamed for what they have become but most of the (postive) influences are not there”. Nugent further extols “The songs are always stuff we have experienced, they are not always happy they are not always sad and they are not always political but they are a little bit of all those things”.
Nugent is particularly excited about the band’s immenent trip to Tasmania enthusing, “Everything is a challenge in the music industry so I can’t understand why people would not want to go down there, it just seems like a natural thing to do, go down there see if you can bring music to people who aren’t getting as much as the mainland, to us that is more inviting than just going up the coast, we want to get down there and play to some totally fresh ears and people who would never usually get to see us, so we are really excited about it”.
Cam continues, “We have been to some obscure places and playing to five people and sometimes its better than playing to people buzzing waiting for someone else or drinking away and talking loudly; they will just sit there and watch you intently. You might sell two EP’s and three of them will go to your MySpace and that to us is like huge success, so we can’t wait to get down there and play to a handful or one hundred or ten or five ..it doesn’t bother us, we just want to get there!”
